Hi!

Starting from version 2.54.0, WebKitGTK uses Skia for rendering and
has removed Cairo support. This has the consequence that the package
can no longer be built on big-endian targets, because those are not
supported by Skia.

In Debian almost all of the official ports are unaffected by this, but
this does impact s390x and several of the unofficial ports, so all
packages that depend on WebKitGTK on the affected ports need to be
removed or modified to disable that dependency.

The latest WebKitGTK packages are now in experimental, and they will
be moved to unstable once this is done.

I'm filing this bug to track this process.

Regards,

Berto

If we assume that evolution-data-server (#1148040), wxwidgets3.2
(#1148041) and meta-gnome (#1148042) can be fixed, it looks like the
packages needing removal from s390x would be the list below. Some of
them can maybe be skipped, if they only build `Architecture: all` binary
packages.

fonts-beteckna Build-Depends on birdfont, but it's Architecture: all, so
I think we can ignore that.

It would probably be possible to cut down this list significantly if
src:swt4-gtk can drop its libswt-webkit-gtk-4-jni binary package,
similar to #1148041.

     smcv

List of packages
----------------

astroidmail
atril
balsa
bazaar
bespokesynth
bibledit
biglybt
bijiben
birdfont
bookworm
cambalache
claws-mail
controlsfx
eclipse-equinox
eclipse-jdt-debug
eclipse-jdt-ui
eclipse-linuxtools
eclipse-platform
eclipse-platform-ui
eclipse-remote
eclipse-swtchart
eclipse-wtp
epiphany-browser
equinox-p2
evolution
evolution-ews
flatseal
foliate
font-manager
formiko
fotocx
freecol
gambas3
geany-plugins
geary
giada
gnome-boxes
gnome-builder
gnome-initial-setup
gnome-sushi
gnucash
iem-plugin-suite
insubstantial
iotas
ipscan
jftp
juce
king
libgepub
libiscwt-java
libjogl2-java
libmiglayout-java
liferea
luakit
manuals
mediathekview
nattable
network-manager-openconnect
onedriver
openjfx
osmo
pdf-presenter-console
pdfsam
piccolo
polari
remmina
rust-javascriptcore6-sys
rust-webkit6-sys
scilab
shotwell
slic3r-prusa
stegosuite
surf
swt4-gtk
swtchart
triplea
tuba
tumbler
tuxguitar
typecatcher
vimb
wasistlos
webkit2gtk
wilsonic-mts-esp
xiphos
yelp

Hi,

I am Pranav and I work in IBM as a Linux Developer on the s390x
platform.

Is bringing Skia to big-endian platforms a technically feasible option
for WebKitGTK?

I would be interested in helping investigate this from the s390x side.
Is there anything I can work on that would help determine the
feasibility of a big-endian Skia port, or otherwise help with keeping
WebKitGTK available on s390x?

Thanks,
Pranav

Hello,

the situation to the best of my knowledge is the following:

- Skia is developed by Google and they don't support big-endian.

- Skia doesn't make releases. WebKitGTK keeps an in-tree copy (under
  Source/ThirdParty/skia) and updates it every few weeks.

- Any attempt to support big-endian platforms would need to happen in
  the Google repo (ideal, but unlikely).

- The second best alternative would be to patch Skia in the WebKit
  repo, but given that Skia is updated frequently someone would have
  to maintain those patches. That's what happens in other projects
  (see [1] for example), but the WebKitGTK team doesn't have the
  resources to do that at the moment.

In Debian we carry some small downstream patches to make WebKitGTK
build in some architectures, but I don't think this is feasible in
this case because of what I just said.

However, if IBM is serious about supporting s390x in WebKitGTK I would
recommend to discuss it with the team in the webkit-gtk mailing list:

https://lists.webkit.org/mailman3/lists/webkit-gtk.lists.webkit.org/

Regards,

Berto

[1] https://github.com/zeldin/chromium_be/blob/master/chromium-146.0.7680.177/skia.patch

Hi Alberto,

Thanks for the reply.
Please give me some time. I'll have a talk
with the senior engineers and see
what can be done from IBM's side.

With regards,
Pranav

Control: reassign -1 ftp.debian.org
Control: retitle -1 RM: webkit2gtk [s390x] -- ANAIS; no longer supports big-endian architectures
Control: affects -1 + src:webkit2gtk

I believe all actions required for this are now archive team
responsibilities. If the archive team removes these ANAIS binary
packages and all binaries of these source packages from s390x, in this
order, I think there should no longer be any dependency problems:

#1149864 python3-wxgtk-webview4.0 (-b)
#1149862 libwx-perl
#1149863 libalien-wxwidgets-perl
#1149865 libwxgtk-webview3.2-1t64 libwxgtk-webview3.2-dev (-b)
#1149632 scilab
#1149633 openjfx
#1149634 libjogl2-java
#1149635 swt4-gtk
#1149631 stremio
#1149630 bibledit
#1149592 ruby-gnome
#1148839 birdfont
(pending) epiphany-browser
#1148038 webkit2gtk

The other bugs listed already exist as removal requests and are marked
as blocking this one, with the exception of epiphany-browser for which
I've opened a blocking bug but I don't have a bug# yet.

Thanks,
     smcv